Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin
The Plank (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
In the few hours between landing after a swing through Pakistan, the Middle East, and North Africa and taking off again for Berlin, Singapore, Japan, and the Philippines, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found time on Friday to stop over in much friendlier territory: a subterranean banquet hall at Washington’s Reagan International Trade Center. There, she addressed the people who tried to...
AMERICAblog (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Robert Pear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg just wrote a piece in the New York Times that could have been (and probably was) written by Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina. Pear and Stolberg reveal that Obama's secret strategy of not getting involved in the health care debate, and then actively undercutting those of us who were trying to fulfill Obama's campaign promises without him, is what actually saved health...
Open Left (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Okay, folks, we progressives got what we wanted. A comprehensive health care reform bill with a reasonably strong public option will be going to the floor as part of leadership bills in both the House and the Senate. We don't yet know whether we will get the best version of the public option in the House bill, and the Senate version is not as strong as progressives have been pushing for. But strengthening...
Medical News Today (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
"President Obama's overhaul hinges on six crucial individuals and their skill at negotiating behind closed doors," The Los Angeles Times reports. "The core group consists of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, legislative affairs director Phil Schiliro, communications expert Dan Pfeiffer, (Peter) Orszag, (Jim) Messina and Nancy-Ann DeParle.
First Read (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
"The campaigner-in-chief kicked off a political blitz on Tuesday, holding three fund-raisers in Manhattan and collecting roughly $3 million for the Democratic Party," The New York Daily News writes. "Obama gobbled up checks of $30,400 per couple, the federal maximum, for the Democratic National Committee at the Mandarin Oriental hotel -- and joked donors got off easy. 'You can't afford...
Daily Kos (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
Politico's Ben Smith and Ken Vogel report : At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform. The role Baucus’s chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy...
Hullabaloo (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
Spinning Like Tops by digby Savannah Guthrie on MSNBC just said: I think there will be courtshipo of those moderate Senators, but look, one thing I heard this morning here at the White House was that the insurance company report, the Price Waterhouse Cooper report, has actually been helpful to some extent (now granted this may be spin but let me just tell you what their argument is) is helpful because...
Open Left (Free subscription) | 10/06/2009
These last few months have provided ample evidence that the American Left may not, in fact, really exist - at least not in the way it is billed in the media and at various progressive political conferences. There is certainly a lot of high-profile Democratic Party infrastructure around today. From Moveon to Organizing for America to the Democracy Alliance, Democratic partisans have done a good job...
MyDD (Free subscription) | 10/01/2009
Well OK, blame Baucus. But Joe Sudbay is dead on about the Senate Finance Committee's rejection of the public option: It was a setback the Obama team brought upon itself. The Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, Jim Messina, used to work for Baucus as his chief of staff. They're very close. Messina and his boss, Rahm Emanuel, had a Senate strategy built around Baucus and his bill. If the White...
Stop the ACLU (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
…this is the question Dave Price asks about this news. Not long after news leaked last month that Andrew Romanoff was determined to make a Democratic primary run against Sen. Michael Bennet, Romanoff received an unexpected communication from one of the most powerful men in Washington. Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff and a [...]
AMERICAblog (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
First, McClatchy's take on the Senate Finance Committee votes yesterday: In the first significant setback for the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday soundly rejected the "public option," or government-run health insurance plan. It was a setback the Obama team brought upon itself. The Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House,...
First Read (Free subscription) | 09/28/2009
Behind the scenes, it's been clear for weeks that President Obama and his team of Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina, and Peter Orzsag would be cutting the final health-care deal. Today's New York Times basically confirms that. "As the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, takes on the delicate task of melding two competing versions of major health care legislation, aides say he will...
Hullabaloo (Free subscription) | 09/28/2009
Throwing Punches by digby Last week I wondered : Does anyone else find it odd that the Obama administration consistently uses the most hardball, down and dirty, tough guy tactics when it comes to Democratic Party electoral politics but pleads that it is required to observe every arcane, institutional ritual when it comes to legislation? David Sirota finds it plenty odd too. He writes about the latest...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
Long-time readers know that I have been fascinated by the deal that the White House struck with the pharmaceutical industry to limit the industry’s contribution to $80 billion in exchange for the industry’s support of the administration’s reform efforts (see here , here , and here ). My interest goes beyond the policy implications of the issue and to what it says about the Obama...
First Read (Free subscription) | 09/22/2009
After reporting how the White House is working to encourage New York Gov. David Paterson (D) not to run for election in 2010, the New York Times takes a front-page look at Team Obama’s involvement in races across the country. “While some party officials applaud the White House for its efforts — there is widespread concern among Democrats that the party could suffer if Mr. Paterson...
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